Good morning! The Chanzo is here with a rundown of major news stories reported in Tanzania on July 1, 2025.
Treason Case Hearing – July 01, 2025: Tanzanian Opposition Leader Tundu Lissu Calls on the State to Drop Charges, Citing Abuse of Court Process
The treason case against the opposition party leader, CHADEMA’s Tundu Lissu, continued on July 1, 2025, during its preliminary stage at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court, presided over by Principal Resident Magistrate Franco Kiswaga. The prosecution requested another adjournment, prompting an exchange with Lissu, who is representing himself. Lissu called on the state to enter a nolle prosequi, and asked court to compel them to do so. Read the extract below of the exchange:
Nasoro Katuga: Your Honour, the case is coming up for mention.
Magistrate: The accused?
Lissu: I am present, Your Honour, and I am ready.
Nassoro Katuga (Prosecution Counsel): Your Honour, the case is before the court for mention, and after the case was read and a legal opinion was issued, it is now at the decision stage — the stage of deciding whether to prosecute or not. Therefore, Your Honour, we were requesting another date to come and inform the Court of the decision that has been made.
Lissu: Thank you very much your Honour,this case not be adjourned beyond today. There is no valid reason to allow another adjournment. Your Honour, the Principal State Attorney and his fellow counsels informed this Court that the investigation was complete. The file has already been sent to the DPP for a decision. It was sent before June 16.
Your Honour, I believe that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) did not study under a mango tree like my late mother… he knows how to read, he studied law, and he has experience in these matters. How much time does it take — how much time is needed — to be satisfied whether there is a case to take to the High Court, or not? If not, then bring a nolle prosequi (formal notice of dropping charges).
How long does it take the Director of Public Prosecutions, who possesses the qualifications outlined in this Constitution — a lawyer who has practiced law for not less than 15 years, if I’m not mistaken — how long does it take to read this case file? So that he can inform your Honourable Court whether there is sufficient evidence to file an information in the High Court, or there is no evidence and he should file a nolle prosequi — that is, bring a nolle before the Court.
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Lissu’s Case Over Alleged False Online Publication Put on Hold
The Chairman of Tanzania’s main opposition party, CHADEMA, Tundu Lissu, remains in custody, where he has now spent 83 days since his arrest. This follows his reappearance yesterday at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court over the charges he is facing.
Lissu is facing two cases. One involves allegations of sedition, in which he is accused of publishing false information online. This case had begun at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court. However, the court suspended the hearing yesterday due to two review applications filed at the High Court of Tanzania. In these applications, Lissu is requesting the High Court to review and annul the Kisutu court proceedings dated June 16, 2025.
Resident Magistrate Godfrey Mhini, who is presiding over the case, stated that due to the existence of these applications, the proceedings will be paused pending the High Court’s decision. He added that the date for resuming the case will be announced through an official court summons.
In this case, Lissu is alleged to have published false information on the YouTube platform, contrary to Section 16 of the Cybercrimes Act No. 14 of 2015.
Tanzania’s Roads Are a Metaphor for Its People’s Daily Lives
On June 29, 2025, I was driving peacefully along a one-way road somewhere in Dar es Salaam in my little car when I was confronted by a massive bully, Maviii 8, coming the other way. I was reluctant to move out of the way because, after all, it was a one-way street, but he started hooting, gesturing, insulting, How dare I block him from going down a one-way street the wrong way?
Who was I to prevent him, a Maviii 8er no less? Didn’t I know he belonged to the “kings of the road?” Yet only 50 metres away, he could have gone down the designated one-way street without any difficulty. Why does he insist on breaking the law? Laziness? Sense of power (I can do what I like!)? Disregard for fellow citizens? Dharau? Or all of them put together?
I harked back to my literature teaching days. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian literary genius, liked to use the road as a metaphor of life and death, a journey fraught with possibilities and threats. Bearing in mind the terrible death toll on Nigerian roads, who was ever sure they would reach their intended destination?
But what about us here in Tanzania? Does it express our own Bongo reality in the same way?
Let me start with this Maviii 8 breaking the law with impunity and even insulting and threatening me for following the law and standing up to him. Is this what happens in our country? Do our leaders act with impunity? And is this impunity becoming even more impunitious?
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Human Connections Aren’t Just Human—Non-Human Actors Play a Role, Too
Have you ever been curious about the original question that set in motion the disciplines that still take many thousands of students across the globe at university level: the social sciences? Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social – An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory is, in my opinion, an excellent attempt at understanding the history, epistemology and ontology of the social from the times of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim to date.
Latour first tries to correct two main problems when the social is approached as a science. First, there is still a general tendency to look at the social sciences as the missing explanation of the natural sciences in order for us to have wholesome knowledge of humanity and life at large. He reminds us that how humans connect is a whole legitimate science that should not be treated as a residual discipline of the natural sciences.
Another issue Latour points us to is that more often than not, social scientists tend to hurriedly want to confront the political questions of their times. They end up compromising the original question of how humans forge relations.
Latour’s attempt, therefore, is at reassembling the social: looking for actors and networks that make human connections. We tend to think of human connections as made by and through humans. We forget how non-human actors determine how humans link up. After living through 2020, we all saw the power of a microscopic organism change the way we greet, gather even work in less than a year.
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